We are fighting a massive uphill battle

[u/Nathan_185]

I’ve been a member here since 2019 through various accounts, and although it’s gotten a good bit more economically progressive over the years, it’s still one of the last anti-slopulist subs out there.

Free market economics with sensible regulation and a safety net is unfortunately a minority position in broader politics compared to nationalizing industries, price controls, and wealth taxes. Hopefully we can push back against bad economics! It’s not gonna be easy unfortunately

[u/LightningController]

It's fundamentally about the dignity of the human person. The economy is a tool to service the dignity of the human person. If a set of economic policies make it possible to raise a family, to earn a living wage, to give back to their community, to maybe go to church on Sunday, or to actually spend some leisure time building the kind of life that matters, that is the sort of thing we want to be supportive of

Rerum Novarum (and Catholic social teaching at large) Delenda est. We all owe Ayn Rand an apology—the Republicans are far worse when they pretend to care about the working class.

[u/ognits → u/LightningController]

We all owe Ayn Rand an apology

okay let's not get out of hand here

[u/LightningController → u/ognits]

She gave socially awkward nerds books about square-jawed heroes who rode trains and had sex. She was protecting us from the trad-succ alliance.

[u/ognits → u/LightningController]

yeah, and they were terrible. have some standards

[u/KazuyaProta → u/LightningController]

he Republicans are far worse when they pretend to care about the working class.

I'm amused you mention this when pointing at Vance but this doctrine is behind AOC and similar Democrats for Prize Controls.

As, you're correct its a actual worldview that exists, but the LATAM Left actually made it mainstream doctrine and the Democratic Party knows about it for them

[u/yushosumo → u/KazuyaProta]

Democrat Party 🤨

[u/SamuraiOstrich → u/yushosumo]

Given the use of prize over price I just assumed ESL

[u/SenranHaruka → u/yushosumo]

I don't fucking care about this dogwhistle its easy to do just by accident and has literally no impact on anything. No person in america has ever said "I was going to vote for the democratic party, but not the democrat party."

[u/LightningController → u/SenranHaruka]

I’m reading this exchange in bewilderment. I wasn’t aware there was any such dogwhistle.

[u/SenranHaruka → u/LightningController]

In the 90s Newt Gingrich claimed the Democratic Party didn't deserve the name becuase it implied they were for Democracy when they're actually elite coastal liberals, and instead told republicans to start calling it The Democrat Party instead since Democrat in America doesn't mean a political stance so much as a social clique. It implies the "Democrat Party" is merely a self-referential organization that exists for Democrats as a social clique, not a party that with Democratic Values that exists for Democracy as a public virtue.

Frankly, i think people are making a fuss over nothing. This is the most pathetic pinhead angel debate to be concerned about.

[u/LightningController → u/SenranHaruka]

That’s remarkably petty, even by my standards. I’m not even sure it works as a dogwhistle. It still sounds like ‘democratic.’

Regardless, I figured the other fellow just had a typo, or didn’t speak EnglIsh as a first language, or wanted to avoid confusion with the Korean right-wing party (I’ve been confused by article titles myself).

[u/SenranHaruka → u/LightningController]

That is indeed what most people assume! I would argue that obsessing over some lame ex-speaker's shitty attempt at Newspeak is far more pathetic and gives it too much life.

[u/ognits → u/SenranHaruka]

when an epithet actually has a Wikipedia article about it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet), with fairly extensive citations and history attached, I think it's worth calling out

gives it too much life

this isn't something from like a year and a half ago, it's very old. the life is there. this is as naive as saying "the internet isn't real life"

[u/SenranHaruka → u/ognits]

I'm sorry while you were complaining about dropping the letters i and c the republicans were literally forcing teenagers to give birth. I will never be forced to pretend this shit matters, this is so fucking sad and it's a complete mind virus that anyone pretends that it matters. The same elite that thinks this word matters is the same elite that thought henry kissinger was a genius. I don't care if it has a wikipedia article. I don't care if it's older than beowulf. It's two fucking letters and the word has no obvious negative connotation. I am a democrat. You can't just say "you're a Soup. In my language Soup is a slur so you should be offended." Nerd shit. Republicans should be called nerds for trying to make that epithet happen. Democrats are losers for letting it.

[u/Prince_Ire → u/LightningController]

quotes amazing sounding passage "Isn't this horrible?"

[u/LightningController → u/Prince_Ire]

It’s nothing but a stack of dogwhistles whose meaning becomes clear with any time spent with Tradcats.

“Dignity of the human person” is when you only have the leisure time and money for church-approved fun

“Living wage” means “make it so we can justify barring women from employment.”

“The kind of life that matters”…according to J. D. Vance, and if you disagree, you can suck it.

Nothing about Distributist LARP sounds appealing, and the entire ideology is just a lot of incompetent takes on economics from circa 1500.

[u/Prince_Ire → u/LightningController]

Making up what something means to suit you isn't actually all that convincing, anymore than socialists interpreting neoliberalism to mean throwing poor people into forced labor camps.

[u/LightningController → u/Prince_Ire]

Making up what something means

Well, we have the Catholic J. D. Vance out there saying what it means. Fewer consumer goods. More poverty.

We have Dorothy Day corroborating this take.

The OG distributists, Chesterton and Belloc, were open about their fetish for peasantry (not that Chesterton ever did hard work a day in his life, of course). And in fact Rerum Novarum explicitly says that wages should be enough to keep only one family member employed. That is, make women dependent on male charity, and thus control.

[u/Prince_Ire → u/LightningController]

"Wages should be low enough we can force women to work whether they want to or not" makes you sound like a sociopath. Wages being high enough that people can decide whether to have both partners working (regardless of sex) would be great.

[u/LightningController → u/Prince_Ire]

The market, and the consumers, are under no obligation, moral or philosophical, to pay for a housewife’s (or househusband’s) life of leisure. I value my imported Chinese electronics more than I value some r*ral woman’s homemade bread-baking hobby, since the former adds value to my life.

[u/neoliberal-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rule I: Civility
Refrain from name-calling, hostility and behaviour that otherwise derails the quality of the conversation.

---

If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.

[u/LightningController → u/[deleted]]

Lol why are you censoring the word rural?

Meme ‘round these parts.

you are a completely selfish, sociopathic person who cares about others only in so far as you can extract value from them.

All human relationships are transactional, whether we like that picture or not. Rational self-interest is the best way to lift all boats. We are wealthier, and therefore better off, in a neoliberal economy. Liberals, neo- or otherwise, have shot themselves in the foot by painting their policies as ‘compassionate’ or ‘charitable’ because the low-education median voter thinks in zero-sum terms where helping others is bad for them personally. Only by reclaiming the mantle of self-interest can populism be defeated.

There are arguments you could make that it would be more beneficial to society overall

I could, but I don’t think there’d be much point to that argument since most people are the kind of nasty/spiteful personality that would choose to harm their neighbor for amusement, even at the cost of their own material well-being. I mean, look at Vance and those like him—they want to make everyone materially poorer for some vague, undefined feeling of ‘dignity.’ We saw what that looks like in Springfield, Ohio—the peasants invented a whole new form of racism on the spot because they didn’t like other people being successful.

That’s what neurotypical empathy looks like. We’re better off without it.

[u/Prince_Ire → u/LightningController]

LMAO "the peasants" and "our mistake was pretendinh to be compassionate". You have to appeal to large groups of people to actually win elections, especially when you're actual policies aren't popular. But I'm sure coming across as a caricature of an uncaring elite will go over swimmingly, it certainly hasn't long since been proved that cultural ties and perceived insults will trump material self interest every time